


A Lot Like Loss

by Cosmo_is_Beink_Melon



Series: A Little, A Lot [2]
Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Awkward Sex, Canon Divergence, Drinking to Cope, M/M, Millock, Missed Opportunities, Protomolocule Business, Spoilers, Weirdness abounds, additional warnings in the author's note, reunited, what if...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-25 20:05:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17731760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmo_is_Beink_Melon/pseuds/Cosmo_is_Beink_Melon
Summary: Havelock is having a drink with the guys from work when he gets the news. No, wait, that makes it sound like he opened his hand terminal to find some uniform wearing that same sorrowful/grave/apologetic look he’s used himself dozens of times.Or: That “maybe” lingers between Havelock and Miller like strange blue fireflies.





	A Lot Like Loss

**Author's Note:**

> This story is essentially **ONE BIG SPOILER** for _Leviathan Wakes_ and _Abaddon's Gate_... So much so that I can’t even tag/warn properly without giving away huge plot points for those novels. So! If you’re okay with that, please jump right in! Otherwise, if you really want to know what you’re getting into, go to the End Notes where I've laid out a couple of warnings.

Havelock is having a drink with the guys from work when he gets the news.

No, wait, that makes it sound like he opened his hand terminal to find some uniform wearing that same sorrowful/grave/apologetic look he’s used himself dozens of times before.

_Dimitri, I’m so sorry to tell you…_

Instead, he’s sitting at the bar, trying, again, to convince himself he really does like the local yeasty beer better than the real thing, and As’ad’s telling a drawn-out—and probably only half-true—story about this girl over at the Glam Shack. There’s a live broadcast playing on a wall screen on mute, subtitles scrolling along the bottom.

Nothing too interesting going on. Not after those live feeds of Eros and all its horrors. Not after the space station hurled itself towards Earth. Not after it rerouted and crashed into Venus. The rest is just politics. The major powers sitting down at the table to bicker over whose dick is fatter, longer, harder.

It’s the U.N.

It’s the Martians.

It’s the OPA.

“And she can _bend_. Christ. Fuck. This broad is flexible. She can get her feet behind her head and braid her own hair with her toes.”

“You’ve got weird fetishes,” Newell says.

Havelock wouldn’t even be watching the screen, except he’s bored and his eyes gotta land somewhere, right? It’s only by chance that he sees the name. Shaped by the muted-lips of the Butcher of Anderson Station.

“Josephus Miller sacrificed himself to save the galaxy…”

Sacrificed himself?

For a moment Havelock thinks, _Huh_ , _that guy’s got the same name as Miller_. It’s only a vague tickling of a thought in the back of his brain, because in what reality does someone you know—much less your former partner— _sacrifice himself to save the galaxy?_

And then they show a picture in the corner.

And there he is.

It’s a terrible picture, probably taken for his Ceres station ID, some time after the divorce. He looks exhausted, his features drooping as if he were under a full g, bags under his eyes, and he’s got that stupid hat on his head.

And...it’s Joe. It’s Joe and Joe is dead and Joe sacrificed himself to save the galaxy.

“I know him…”

“Huh?” As’ad says, looking over his shoulder. He crinkles his nose like he just caught a whiff of untreated waste-water. “Johnson? Who doesn’t? Fucking traitor.”

“Miller,” Havelock corrects. “The Belter.”

The second it’s out of his mouth, he regrets it. He knows what these assholes think about people in the Belt. There’s half a beat and then Newell and As’ad let loose hateful slurs. Skinnies, they call them, or vacuum-heads, or worse, and, like he does every day, Havelock pretends not to hear.

Except it’s Miller they’re talking about, not just some random asshole. Not one of the fuckers on Ceres who treated him like shit, who kept him on the outside of everything. _Miller,_  who was good to him, sometimes. Who was his friend, sometimes. Who was his partner. Always.

Miller’s dead.

He sacrificed himself to save the galaxy.

Havelock takes another sip of his beer. He looks at As’ad and says, “So she’s good with her toes?”

* * *

Havelock wishes he’d drunk more at the bar, because he’s almost beginning to sober by the time he reaches his hole. He unlocks the door. He steps inside. He thinks about Joe.

And in the quiet stillness, the absence of him is palpable.

Which is really stupid considering Miller has never been to Havelock’s hole here on Ganymede. They never drank together on his sofa, they never argued in his kitchen. They never had sex in his bed. They never.

Never existed together _here_.

But there was a ‘maybe,’ the last time they were together, worlds away.

Havelock scrubs a hand across his face and sinks down into the chair next to the wall. It’s not a comfortable chair, but he’s not feeling up to comfort.

There was a maybe.

He didn’t believe it, not really. He didn’t not believe it either.

So why does he feel like this? Like he put stock in it. Like, somehow he tipped it just enough that it was a bit more ‘maybe yes’ than ‘maybe no.’

If nothing else, he figured he’d at least _see_ Miller again.

Get to talk to him.

He’d been meaning to send a message. He’d meant to just say hi. Just say, _How are you doing, Joe?_ Or maybe, _Don’t worry, Joe, I’m safe. No one found out I sent you that information._

Probably not say, _When will I see you again?_

But now he realizes that while he was mentally composing messages he’d never sent, Miller was already dead, he’d already sacrificed himself…

For the girl.

For the galaxy.

 _He’s_ the reason Eros changed course.

 _He’s_ the reason Havelock still has an Earth to go back to.

And now Joe’s dust on Venus and ‘maybe, someday’ just became ‘not ever.’

Because Miller is dead.

* * *

Havelock dreams about Miller. In the dream, he’s on Eros, chasing his former partner down an infinite corridor. The walls bleed and writhe and hands reach out for him from everywhere, fingernails catching, tearing his clothes to ribbons. And Joe won’t stop and he won’t turn around, no matter how hard Havelock calls after him.

He wakes up sweating and uneasy.

He goes to work.

He hurts someone.

He tells himself that they deserved it. They probably did. (Probably.)

He goes home to more restless sleep, except in this dream, he’s back on Ceres, like he never left. And he and Joe are having sex on Shaddid’s desk and Havelock’s so worried she’s going to walk in on them that he can’t get it up. But what Miller’s doing to him feels good and somehow he ejaculates without ever getting hard.

And then there aren’t any walls and everyone can see them. The whole department is watching, and their hateful eyes are on him and everyone’s speaking what his dream mind tells him is Belter Creole, but when he wakes he realizes was probably closer to gutter French.

He goes to work.

He shoots the shit with a group of coworkers he can barely tolerate.

He goes to the bar and he gets drunk and he watches the news feeds like he’s going to see Joe’s name again. Like there’s something more they can say than _he sacrificed himself to save the galaxy…_

A woman flirts with him, asks him if he wants company. A prostitute, maybe. She’s beautiful, with a soft mouth and large doe eyes, and he doesn’t want her. Not even a little bit. So he tells her to go away and she tells him that he can go fuck himself.

He lays his head on the bar and drifts off.

Hours or minutes later, they kick him out.

He walks around the esplanade for an endless hour until he finally finds his hole. Except, it’s not his hole, so once he finishes apologizing to the occupants and convincing them not to file a complaint about his use of security override codes, his head is a little clearer, but it still takes him another fifteen minutes to get home.

He doesn’t cry, because what’s there to cry about? It’s not like he was in love. It’s not like Miller made him any promises. They had sex a couple of times. He’d have liked to do it a couple more.

He liked Miller.

A lot, even.

But the man’s dead. Sacrificed himself to save the galaxy.

That night he dreams about glowing blue fireflies.

He’s in the bathroom, taking a piss, and suddenly fireflies begin blinking on and off all around him, filling the room with an ethereal glow, and then there’s a hand on his dick and it’s not his own. It isn’t a normal hand, either. Too heavy, like it’s made of stone. And he looks up and there, in the mirror, is Miller, eyes black, skin gray, fireflies dancing in a nebulous cloud around him. His clothes are rumpled and he’s wearing that damn hat.

“You’re alive,” Havelock says like a statement of fact, but there’s no hope in his voice. Despite the assertion, he only feels possibilities. Maybe you’re alive. Maybe you’re dead. But this is definitely a dream. “And...you’re touching my dick?”

“Hey…” Miller says, and his voice is a little distant, a little echoey. Everything about this is weird. He pulls his hand away and Havelock misses the contact immediately. “We need to talk.”

* * *

Havelock takes the day off, something he hasn’t done since he got this job on Ganymede. He puts on his civvies and he sends out messages.

To his mother.

To a former colleague on Mars.

To the high-school sweetheart-turned-best friend he hasn’t spoken to in the better part of a decade.

None of the messages really say anything. Just checking in, _Hey, how are you doing?_ He knows they are poor substitutes for the conversation he really wants to have.

For a long time, he lays in his bed, staring up at the low ceiling. It troubles him that he can’t seem to get over this. If the situation had been reversed, if he was the one talking a rogue, infected space station into crashing on Venus, would Miller have cared?

(Of course he would have.)

Dimitri sits up with a wheeze and takes out his hand terminal.

It’s stupid what he’s going to do.

Really, stupid.

Letters you never mean to send.

He hits record. He stares at the camera. He wets his lips.

“Hey, partner,” he starts, but the pause after that drags on and on as he struggles to think of what he wants to say. He erases the message and starts over. “Hey, Joe. I know you won’t get this. But I…” He grunts in disgust, erases the message and starts over again. “Miller. You’re an asshole, you know that? What happened to meeting up after you found Mao? You really had to go put your foot in another big mess, didn’t you? _Saving the galaxy_. Jesus H. Christ, partner. I…” Havelock pauses, looks down, and then back up at the camera. “I’m going to miss you. Don’t know quite how you weaseled your way into that...but you did. Which makes you even more of an asshole for not coming back.”

He stops the recording and then watches it on a loop.

Eventually, he sends it, just because it needs sending.

There’s no one there to receive it.

No hand terminal waiting for a connection.

“Hey, Dimitri…”

Havelock whips around, grabbing the gun he keeps under his pillow. His training leads the barrel to a target, but his mind quivers with confusion.

“Holy Mo—” The words die on his lips and the gun shakes in his hands.

It wasn’t a dream.

It wasn’t a dream.

It wasn’t a dream.

It wasn’t a dream.

It wasn’t a dream.

It wasn’t—

Havelock thumbs off the safety.

“You’re dead,” he says to the... _thing_...wearing Miller’s face. Blue fireflies dance through the room, creating a macabre light show. “You’re…”

Havelock smells ozone and something rich and earthy.

“I thought I lost my hat,” it says in a voice that echoes like it’s lost in a deep cavern and Havelock remembers his dream (not a dream, not a dream, not a dream). Miller moves toward him, movements jerky and awkward and Havelock rolls off his bed and takes a step back. “Thought I left it through the door.”

“ _Stop_ ,” he says. “Stop. Even if it’s not you, I don’t want to have to shoot.”

Except in a way he does. In a way he wants to obliterate this thing with Miller’s face. Unless...

“Dimitri.”

“ _Stop_ ,” he says again, his breath coming hard and fast.

“You don’t understand. I don’t understand. _Bis bien_ , it’s OK. I still have time to make it to breakfast.”

“What...does that mean?” Havelock asks slowly.

Joe is here.

Joe is dead.

 _Something_ is here.

It can’t be Joe.

“I have something I need to do, but I can’t do it because there’s a lingering thorn. They left a thorn. Do you see? It’s like trying to leave your hole with all the lights still on. We need to talk.”

Miller’s words remind Dimitri of the Eros feed, the way dozens of voices from different recordings spouted odd fragments of sentences, sound bytes strung together to form something like a conversation, but without any cohesion or meaning.

“Why are you here, Joe?” He lowers his gun.

“Why are any of us anywhere?” he replies, glancing out of the corner of his eye and startling a little. Havelock looks, but there’s nothing there. A firefly zooms across his face, streaking blue over his gray-tinged skin. “Two downstairs and one on the roof. I’m not crazy, Dimitri.”

He walks around the bed (so not a ghost then) and right up to Havelock, grabbing his shoulders. Those leaden hands are too heavy to be human.

“I want all the stars,” he murmurs, gaze intent. “I want all the stars in the sky.”

Havelock doesn’t know why what he hears is: _I want you, Dimitri._

Miller kisses him with lips flushed black. It’s unlike any kiss he’s ever experienced. Raw and convulsive. Their teeth clatter against each other. Miller’s tongue is heavy when it forces its brutal way into his mouth. But the thrill chasing up and down Havelock’s spine… that’s real. That’s right.

The kiss goes on far too long, as if Miller no longer needs to pause for breath. Havelock collapses against the wall of the hole, gasping for air. “Joe?” he croaks out when he can spare the breath. “Are you really in there?”

He lets himself be guided back toward the bed. This is insane. He’s insane. This can’t be Miller… it can’t… But whether this is a protomolocule-twisted facsimile, an echo, or another dream, Havelock is desperate to believe that there’s something of Miller left.

He’s frightened.

He’s hungry.

He wants one more time.

Just one more time.

He won’t ask the universe for anything else beyond that.

The movements are juddering and awkward, the way Miller twitches is inhuman and unsettling. Havelock lays his hands on Joe’s arms to soothe him. They kiss like the tide breaking against a rocky shore.

Havelock might be going mad.

Something snapped in him when he learned of Miller’s sacrifice…

And—

Havelock lets out a long groan as Miller’s fingers, fumbling rough and dry, work their way beneath his waistband.

It feels good until it doesn’t.

He pulls Miller's hand free, brings it to his mouth, draws the fingers in past his lips. He runs his tongue around and over them. They taste earthy and metallic, both. He lets saliva well up in his mouth. And when Miller pulls his hand free, it is slick and dripping with spit.

Havelock struggles out of his pants, then he turns, taking Miller’s hand and guiding it down between his legs. They were never great at this. But they managed. Death prevented them from continuing—improving, but no longer. They’ll manage again. He doesn’t wince at the heavy-handedness of Miller's ministrations.

Fingers of stone force their way inside him, and he cries out. A merciless hand closes on his cock and he cries out again.

Havelock doesn’t care, because now, he too is made of stone.

He needs Miller.

Needs Miller to be alive.

Needs this not to be a fantasy or, worse, a hallucination.

It’s wrong

Wrong

Wrong

Wrong

_So goddamn right_

To be filled by what remains of Miller.

The man whispers ceaselessly as he thrusts, no pauses for breath, running headlong from one incoherent rambling to the next. He speaks about Ceres, about doors and corners, about all the stars in the sky.

Those stars fill up Havelock’s mind as he strokes himself in time to the spasmodic rhythm of Miller’s hips. He is suffused with all their light and heat. To Joe, _he’s_ all the stars in the sky.

Or he’s crazy.

But it still feels so good.

He comes on a choked sob and Joe follows him with a confused exclamation.

When the shaking and shuddering finally calms, Havelock clings to Miller. He knows if he lets go, he’ll never see him again. He told himself it would be enough. And it has to be.

It _has_ to be.

It’s not.

“There’s something I have to do. Something I have to find. But…”

“You want all the stars in the sky?”

“You got it, partner.”

“Maybe,” Havelock says, and for the first time in days, he can feel the fragile warmth of hope. “ _Maybe_ ”

And then Miller is gone from the circle of his arms, burst into a cloud of lazily churning blue fireflies. All too quickly, they dissipate—blinking out completely—except for one.

It lingers.

 

—Fin.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't not. I just...couldn't. I love these two so much. And Echo-Miller had some unfinished business. 
> 
> And I know this breaks all sorts of canon explanations for why Holden is the only one who can interact with Miller in _Abaddon's Gate_ , but hopefully you enjoyed it anyway! :-)
> 
>  **For those who jumped down here from the intro note:** This story contains major character death and then major character undeath, (both are canon).
> 
> (Feedback makes the author blush and swoon! Please consider telling me what you think.)


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